One of the most troubling aspects of liberal hypocrisy is its obsession with the suppression of debate, and even with what speech is permissible during a debate.  These are the same liberals, mind you, who constantly lecture us about the need for diversity.  By diversity, they don’t mean diversity of opinion, of course.  “Diversity” to a Leftist means embracing a wide variety of people, including black liberals, Hispanic liberals, gay liberals, transgender liberals, and a limited number of Caucasians, who happen to be Marxists.  Strangely, these advocates for diversity will permit there to be only one side to every issue – their side.  The problem is most acute on our college campuses, where the tenured faculty by and large consists of former 1960’s radicals who, in their youth, saw it as their solemn duty to challenge authority.  Now that they are the authority on campus, however, challengers are disciplined and condemned.  Colleges once were vibrant centers of learning, where free speech reigned and every side of any issue could be aired and considered.  No more.  Our First Amendment freedom is nowhere more at risk than on a college campus, where the faculties are the functional equivalent of the Japanese Fascist-era Kempetai – the thought police.  A few brave academics have noticed.  NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt attributes the recent wave of campus intolerance to “a new religion,” a Spanish Inquisition, where “true believers” act against heretics who would violate orthodoxy.  Mr. Haidt says these true believers are transforming citadels of intellectual freedom into holy spaces, where supposed victim groups are worshiped like gods and are provided “safe spaces,” like the Safe Zone at the College of Charleston, where “one can feel free to talk about being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, allied, asexual or intersex without fear of criticism or hatred.  It is a place where one can feel not only supported, but affirmed and valued.”  Even the New York Times has taken notice.  Times writer Judith Shulevitz described a scene at Brown University, part of the vaunted Ivy League.  In anticipation that a libertarian speaker might criticize the accepted term “rape culture,” the school created a  safe space for people who might find potential comments “troubling” or “triggering.” The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma, which might result from bombardment by viewpoints that differed from their dearly and closely held beliefs.  Ms. Shulevitz mused, “I’m old enough to remember a time when college students objected to providing a platform to certain speakers because they were deemed politically unacceptable.  Now students worry whether acts of speech or pieces of writing may put them in emotional peril.”  Hey Judith, everyone’s old enough to remember Leftist suppression of conservative speech.  It happened at least 3 times in the last 2 months – at Berkeley and NYU in February, and at Middlebury College in March, where a violent mob of students attacked a Middlebury College professor and author Charles Murray, for daring to express an unorthodox opinion.  Professor Haidt has likened the atmosphere at his school to the good old days in East Germany, with the true believers playing the role of the Stasi (secret police).  The faculty members function as the high priests on campus.  It is their job to enforce orthodoxy.  Witness, recent events at Northern Arizona University.  There, a female student was marked down for her use of a prohibited word.  What’s that?  Yes, the student’s sin was that she dared to use the word “mankind.”  The Professor/Priestess had included that word on a list of prohibited words, with the proviso, “I will respect your choice to leave your diction choices ‘as is’ and to make whatever political and linguistic statement you want to make by doing so.  By the same token, I will still need to subtract a point because your choice will not be made in the letter or spirit of this particular class, which is all about having you and other students looking beneath your assumptions and understanding that ‘mankind’ does not mean ‘all people’ to all people.  It positively does not.”  The fact that virtually nothing means the same thing to all people apparently was lost on the Professor.  And notice her viewpoint.  “I decide what words may be spoken, and should you choose to deviate, that’s your political statement.”  No Professor, the list of forbidden words is YOUR political statement!  The Professor also seems not to comprehend that “respect” for a student’s choice of language, coupled with automatic punishment for that choice, is neither tolerance nor respect, it’s oppression.  Instead of “mankind,” the student must use “humankind.”  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines mankind as “the human race:  the totality of human beings.”  So mankind and humankind are synonyms.  Even the extremely liberal History Channel understands this.  They entitled a recent series, Mankind, The Story of All of Us.  Maybe the Professor should correct them, after all, the Merriams and Webster all were men, so their definition  can’t be trusted.  The Professor’s list of dirty words is a typical Leftist phenomenon, the good idea, run amok.  In the early 1980’s New Jersey, like many States, revised its statutes and other enactments to be gender neutral, by including both masculine and feminine pronouns where necessary.  That made sense.  But mandating humankind over mankind?  Really?  Where does it end?  When a sewer worker goes to work, does he or she descend into a humanhole?   Will a person arrested for humanslaughter be placed in humanacles?  When I go to Florida, will I see the humanatees?  Must a department store mannikin henceforward be called a humannikin or perhaps a womannikin?  Will humankind be able to humange so humany forced changes?  The real question is how long will thinking people tolerate the assault on their language and culture by a mob of uncultured true believers who themselves tolerate nothing but their own beliefs?  The truth is, the Arizona Professor is a humaniac, and her forbidden word list is a steaming pile of humanure.

Once upon a time, we lived in a world in which it was understood that the majority ruled.  Ah, those were the days.  Now, lest some liberal snowflake take offense, I’m not advocating a tyranny of the majority.  You see, we have this Constitution and Bill of Rights.  These are the documents that you highly evolved Progressives alternately ignore, revile and attempt to change on the latest left-wing whim.  These documents provide the necessary protections for racial and ethnic minorities, and the like.  I’m not talking about them.  I’m talking about our elected representatives in the Congress, more specifically, the Senate.  There are 100 Senators, and logically one would assume that, to pass legislation or a nomination, 51 votes would suffice.  One could argue that this was what the Founders intended.  The Constitution empowers the Vice President to break ties in the Senate when the vote is evenly divided, and it clearly spells out when a super-majority vote is required:   (1) overriding presidential vetoes;  (2) removing Federal officers through impeachment proceedings with conviction by two-thirds vote of the Senate;  (3) ratifying treaties by two-thirds vote of the Senate;  (4) expelling members from the House or Senate; and  (5) proposing constitutional amendments.  It follows, therefore, that, for any other vote, a simple majority should suffice, but sadly, this is not the case.  The Senate has a rule which authorizes the filibuster (endless debate) of any issue, and which requires 60 votes (cloture) to end and move to a vote on the issue.  “Filibuster.”  It’s a funny word, derived from the Spanish filibustero, itself deriving from the Dutch vrijbuiter, “privateer, pirate, robber,” from whence the English word, “freebooter.”  So, one who filibusters is akin to a pirate, who steals the vote of the majority.  The practice came into use in the U.S Senate in the early 19th Century.  It’s been used by both Parties, but most notably by Senate Democrats, who used filibusters to prevent any meaningful civil rights legislation from being enacted for about 100 years.  The filibuster wasn’t invented in the Senate.  Such dilatory tactics were employed in ancient Rome, most notably by Cato the Younger, who filibustered to frustrate the policies of Julius Caesar.  And now, in 2017, comes Chuck Schumer, who has vowed to filibuster the nomination of Neil Gorsuch as a Justice of the Supreme Court.  You see, Gorsuch has sworn to decide cases based on the facts and the law.  In other words, he would act like a judge, and that’s the last thing Schumer and his band of pirates want.  Republicans have 52 votes in the Senate.  In a sane world, that would be enough, but our world is far from sane, and in addition to halting Senate action on much needed legislation, the Democrats now seek to stop all Senate action of which they, the minority Party, do not approve.  Thus, the time has come to end the filibuster, as the rule is but a vestige of a Senate which no longer exists.  Democrats should have no problem with this, after all, they claim the Constitution itself is “a living document,” subject to alteration by five judges, and we’re only talking about Senate Rule XXII.  Senators like to say the Senate policy of delay serves to “cool off” hot notions cooked up in the House.  Thus, they justify the obstructionist tactics used by Cato more than 2,000 years ago.  Now, while I hesitate to equate Donald Trump with Julius Caesar, there are some in the Senate would would like to knife him.  On the other hand, Chuck Schumer certainly is no Cato, but the Senate logjam must be broken.  It is the arcane Senate Rules that resulted in the debacle that was the failed Ryan healthcare bill.  The filibuster should go the way of the Romans.  When the rule was enacted, the Senate was elected by the State Legislatures, thus Senators represented the State from which they came, giving the States a seat at the table on federal matters, just as the Founders intended.  The filibuster kept the populous States from ignoring the interests of the small States.  The 17th Amendment changed all that, providing for popular election of Senators.  Logically, if Senators are elected by the same voters as are House members, and if a simple majority decides all House votes, other than those singled out for super-majority by the Constitution, then the purpose of the filibuster no longer exists.  For that matter, but for the 17th Amendment, today’s Senate would include of about 67 Republicans, so what purpose does the filibuster serve?  Well, in 2001, the New York Times called the filibuster nothing more than a tactic for sore losers.  In  2009, Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse decried Republican filibusters as acts of obstruction.  In 2010, Democrat Senator Al Franken  attacked the use of filibusters by Republicans as a “perversion of the filibuster.”  In 2012, Democrat Elizabeth Warren said the rules should be changed to limit filibusters.  All three, still in office, must have changed their minds.  And Democrats have never been reluctant to change the filibuster rule whenever it served their purposes.  In 1917, they created the cloture system, requiring a 2/3 vote to end a filibuster.  In the 1960’s, to help them to deny civil rights to all citizens, Democrats changed the rule to allow the Senate to move on to other issues during a filibuster.  In 1975, Democrats changed cloture from 67 to 60 votes.  In 2013, to get extremist Obama nominees on the Courts, they abolished the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations.  But now, we have a Republican President and a Republican Congress.  The New York Times has had second thoughts.  On the eve of the Trump inauguration, they wrote, “It’s important to keep the filibuster.  With it, presidents must try to win the minority’s support for nominees.  This has helped to keep nominations in the judicial mainstream.” To define terms, to a Democrat, “the judicial mainstream” means appointing judges who will ignore statutes and the Constitution and simply rubber stamp the leftist agenda.  Justices Sotomayor and Kagan fit that mold.  Republicans didn’t block them, but Cato the Schumer, and his band of pirates will not reciprocate.  Gorsuch is not a wild-eyed leftist rubber stamp, therefore he is not acceptable.  As President of the Senate, Vice-President Pence, as presiding officer, could, on motion, declare a Senate rule unconstitutional, and that decision could be upheld by a simple majority vote.  It must be done.  To paraphrase Cato the Younger’s grandfather, Cato the Elder, “Cato the Schumer must be destroyed.”  (Look it up).  When the majority rules, sanity will again reign in America.  When he was defeated by Caesar, Cato the Younger did the right thing.  He killed himself.  We should have such luck.

The Dog Days of Summer used to be the silly season in Washington, but with the election of Donald Trump, Washington is downright crazy all year long.  Instead of  Congress spending its time concentrating on little issues like the $20 trillion debt, illegal immigration, Islamic terrorism, the tax code, or the impending failure of Obamacare, our lawmakers spent last Monday on an issue of vital importance, trying to disprove President Trump’s Tweets suggesting that the Obama Administration wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower.  Trump made his Tweets on March 4, setting off a firestorm of outrage in the Media.  How dare he suggest such a thing?  By March 6, Bloomberg (so-called) News “reasoned” that if Obama approved wiretaps of Trump that was an impeachable act, so if he didn’t do it, Trump should be impeached for suggesting it.  Huh?  The Media howled, “Where’s your evidence Trump?”  Let’s get something straight.   Where’s your evidence would have been a legitimate question had Donald Trump been the source of the wiretapping allegations.  He was not.  In November, the website Heatstreet reported Obama Justice Department wiretapping of Trump operatives.  The New York Times published stories about wiretaps of Trump employees in January and February.  General Flynn was intercepted on a wiretap in December.  Presumably the Media outlets that reported and repeated stories about investigations of Trump & Co. must have had some evidence, right?  Wrong!  Hey Trump, you F****d up, you trusted us!  Turns out they really are fake news, just like Trump said, because the Media immediately announced there was no evidence.  Then, on Monday, Congress had FBI Director Comey and NSA Director Rogers testify to refute Trump. We learned that the FBI opened an investigation into a possible Trump connection to Russia and Russian attempts to influence the election in late July.  Congress was not informed until now, due to “sensitivities,” about the investigation involving Trump’s contacts with Russia.  No evidence of Trump collusion with Russia was uncovered, but Comey said by December, the intelligence community became confident that Russia engaged in a “multifaceted campaign” that involved “active measures” to “hurt” Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and “help” Trump.  “It was a fairly easy judgment for the community,” Comey said. “Putin hated Secretary Clinton so much that he had a clear preference to the person running against her.”  At least we can’t fault Putin’s taste.  Comey told us, “They (Russia) wanted to mess with our election and hurt our country in general, that’s always the baseline.”  Quite a revelation, huh?  Of course, if you read Frank On Friday you already knew that.  On February 24, I wrote, “Vladimir Putin is a puppeteer, but he’s not pulling Trump’s strings.  It’s much worse.  Putin understood that there was a chance that an outsider could be elected President.  Putin knew that this was an opportunity to undermine and destabilize the U.S. government.”  “All he had to do was have the Deputy Foreign Minister allege that there were contacts with Trump.  Now he can sit back and watch while our government tears itself apart.”  Now how come a fat little guy in New Jersey, sitting in his living room, gets it, and the Media does not?  The answer is, they get it, but the truth doesn’t help them to destroy Trump.  The big story from Monday’s testimony, at least as far as the Media was concerned, was Comey’s statement that there was “no evidence” to support Trump’s claims that he was wiretapped by President Obama.  Aha!  That proves Trump was wrong, crazy even.  Does it?  To paraphrase a former President, I guess it depends on what your definition of “wiretapped by President Obama” is.  Despite the facts that Obama opened an office in Washington, bought a big house there, into which he has moved his Chief of Staff, Valerie Jarrett, runs a protest group (Organizing For America) with a $40 million war chest, and he has announced his intention to resist Trump’s policies, nobody thinks Obama actually sat there wearing headphones, listening to Trump conversations, and Trump never claimed that he did.  But by the same token, no reasonable and honest person actually could believe that Obama’s Justice Department was investigating Trump and Obama didn’t approve the action.  Yeah, but Trump said he was tapped at Trump Tower.  That never happened!  That’s crazy right?  Is it?  Fresh off of Monday’s “no evidence of Obama wiretapping” story, on Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes revealed that  members of the intelligence community “incidentally collected” communications from the Trump transition team during legal surveillance operations of foreign targets.  Now “surveillance that collects communications” my children, means they either tapped the phones, or even more shockingly, “bugged” conversations.  Nunes said this surveillance, which occurred in November, December and January, produced “dozens” of reports which unmasked several individuals’ identities and were “widely disseminated.”  As far as Nunes could tell, none of the reports mentioned Russia or Russians and he was unsure whether the surveillance occurred at Trump Tower.  So, the Trump transition team was the subject of government surveillance.  Care to guess where the transition team was located in November, December and January?  I remember a steady procession of politicians, hats in hands, mouths full of crow, riding up and down a long escalator in a New York building where the transition was being done.  That’s right, it was Trump Tower, wasn’t it?  So maybe Trump was right after all.  His people were intercepted, and their identities are known to “the intelligence community” (that’s what unmasked means).  But who were those unmasked men, and who unmasked them?  As I told you on March 10, in his last days as President, Il Duce Obama revoked a 30 year old policy that prevented the dissemination of raw intelligence data, by permitting it to be disseminated to 16 different agencies, thereby assuring that it would be leaked.  “Raw intelligence data” means whatever is said or heard, and includes “chatter” and “rumor,” which does not constitute “evidence.”  Obama made sure it would be leaked, and the Media dutifully reported it.  But if you accept the Media reports at face value, then “where’s your evidence?”  The howling Media is right this time.  Trump should not have believed what they reported.  Anybody who believes the fake news must be nuts.  Hi Ho Silver, away!

The fact that the Media has long had a double standard certainly is nothing new.  It has been a fact of life for Republicans for many years.  Simply put, the Media will excuse most anything done by a liberal Democrat, but will demand the resignation of a Republican for even the most trivial alleged miscue.  Nowadays, it is unnecessary to modify Democrat with the word “liberal,” as the only Democrats left are extremely liberal.  Once upon a time, there were moderate, even conservative Democrats, but no more.  Indeed, it is fair to say that, if JFK appeared today holding the same positions he held in 1960, he would be unwelcome in the Democrat party.  And so, we used to complain about a double standard.  Some examples?  Years ago, Republican Senator Bob Packwood kissed a staffer.  She complained, and the Media forced Packwood to resign.  Meanwhile, Senators Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd reportedly sexually accosted a waitress in a Capitol Hill restaurant, by making a “human sandwich” of her.  The woman ran screaming from the room.  The Media had the good sense never to mention that.  The same Media that whispered rumors about Dwight Eisenhower having an affair with his British driver during World War II, denounced Republicans for daring to attempt to impeach Bill Clinton for engaging in an adulterous affair in the Oval Office, and then lying about it under oath in court.  Need I go on?  The point is that, although the Media double standard was bad enough, our so-called journalists were not satisfied that they were lending sufficient support to Democrats.  As a result, the Media now has divested itself of any pretense of impartiality, of any notion of fair play or journalistic ethics, and openly and notoriously has declared war on President Trump.  Now, I understand they didn’t like Trump, but so what, plenty of Republicans didn’t like him either.  The Media painted Trump, from day one as a bigoted, ignorant, mysoginistic, lying blowhard.  According to Media “experts” Trump was a joke, his candidacy was not serious, and of course, he could never win.  Trump’s greatest sin was that he proved the experts wrong.  They hit him with every negative thing they could think of, but it didn’t stick.  They assured us that he couldn’t win.  Trump won anyway, so the Media determined that he must be destroyed.  In so doing, the Media has become so unhinged that, although most Americans no longer believe the crap they peddle as the truth, they have doubled down on crazy.  First, the Media has continued its campaign obsession with Trump’s tax returns.  The same Media that argued Romney was too rich to be President, suggested that Trump might not be as well off as he claimed, and thus, was not rich enough to be President.  They suggested he didn’t pay taxes.  As I write this, MSNBC (the More Socialist National Barack Channel) has illegally leaked part of an old Trump tax return that shows he paid $38 million in income tax that year.  They’re still not satisfied.  Then there are the Russians.  The Media began the drumbeat during the campaign.  Trump colluded with Russia to get Russia to help him by hacking into the DNC.  The fact that no connection to Trump was necessary, because the Russians, having hacked Hillary’s private server in 2010, had been reading the emails of Hillary and John Podesta for 5 years before Trump announced his candidacy,  didn’t matter.  Exactly how the Russians, or anybody, could compel voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to vote for Trump by exposing Podesta’s emails was not explained.  The New York Times (Times) reported during the campaign about alleged links between Trump staffers and Russian intelligence agents.  Another Media report on November 7, 2016, quoted “two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community” who confirmed that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving U.S. counter-intelligence agents permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.  These sources claimed that the FBI re-drew an earlier FISA court request which they said named Trump, and which was denied in June, and then made a second request that was granted in October.  The sources suggested that a FISA warrant was granted to look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US persons.  On January 19, 2017, the Times printed that “American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as a part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump.”  The Times referred to intelligence reports that are “based on some of the wiretapped communications” and said they were provided to the White House, which at that time, was still under Barack Obama.  The Times report said the FBI was leading the investigation, with the help of the NSA, the CIA and the financial crimes unit of Treasury Department.  The Media descended on the “story” and ran continuous coverage of supposed collusion between Trump and Russians.  Now here’s the funny part.  After having been bashed in the Media over totally unsubstantiated allegations that he colluded with Russians, and was the subject of a wiretap investigation by the Obama Justice Department, Donald Trump complained about Trump Tower having been wiretapped by Obama.  This set off an immediate firestorm in the Media.  How dare Trump make such an accusation?  Having completely lost his mind, and consumed by his hatred of Trump, John McCain even demanded that Trump offer evidence of wiretapping or withdraw the complaint.  Then, the same Media that printed and broadcast the story of Russian collusion and wiretaps, turned on a dime, and declared that there was no evidence of collusion and that there had been no wiretaps.  The Media challenged Trump, “where’s your evidence?”  The Times backtracked.  Recently, they altered the headline on their January 19 story to remove the word “wiretapped” and substituted “intercepted.”  The fact that the “interception” of electronic communications is the very definition of a “wiretap” apparently sailed right over their heads.  The Times even alibied, saying, “even if we did say ‘wiretap’ we didn’t claim Obama himself was doing the tapping.”  Really?  Obama’s Justice Department, run by an Attorney General who met secretly with Bill Clinton in that same month of June when the alleged investigation was launched, was conducting an investigation of the Republican presidential candidate, and Obama didn’t know about and approve of it?  That’s like Nixon claiming “you can’t blame me for the Watergate break-in because I didn’t plant the bugs myself.”  Wait, he tried that, and the New York Times didn’t buy it.  So let’s recap.  The Media can accuse you of anything without evidence, and if you complain, they can deny the accusation and demand that the accused produce the evidence they know doesn’t exist, while all the time pretending to be journalists in search of the truth.  They have no credibility and are unworthy of belief.  Journalism, rest in peace.

When Dan Rather no less (and there is no less), announced that the resignation of General Flynn might be a bigger scandal than Watergate, I dismissed it as a Rather raving.  Rather’s assessment may have been more right than he knows, but for the wrong reason.  As I wrote this, it was President’s Day, a national holiday which a significant number of our citizens  chose to celebrate as “Not My President’s Day.”  Just another opportunity to protest the lawful election of Donald Trump.  On February 17, President Trump held an unprecedented press conference in which he denounced segments of the Media as “fake news” and spoke out against the torrent of leaks of classified information which has marked his first weeks in office.  There has been plenty of fake news peddled by the Media as the truth.  For only a few examples, the Media has reported the following stories, all of them false:  Trump removed the bust of Martin Luther King from the Oval Office; Trump’s Executive Orders included a religious test for immigrants; Trump threatened to invade Mexico;  Trump is planning to use 100,000 National Guard troops to round up illegal aliens.  Chuck Todd of NBC (the national Barack channel) even labelled any criticism of false news or the news outlets as un-American and unconstitutional.  Apparently he never actually read the First Amendment.  Hey Chuck, here’s how it works.  The third clause of the Amendment says you get to say whatever you want, but the second clause says we get to criticize it.  Then we have the leaks, of the contents of Trump’s calls to the Mexican President and the Australian Prime Minister, and of a portion of a wiretapped conversation between General Flynn and the Russian Ambassador.  As I wrote this, evidence was emerging which suggested that the persistent leaking of classified information indeed is a scandal that dwarfs Watergate, which was, at best, a third rate burglary, and a fourth rate coverup.  Constitutional lawyer Jay Sekulow has characterized the Flynn resignation as “a political assassination” which is part of “a soft coup.”  Former D.C. U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova went further, “What we have here is a coup d’état,” designed to result in Trump’s impeachment.  Journalist Piers Morgan has written that “there are traitors” in the U.S. intelligence services.  What happened with Flynn?  Well, he was named as Trump’s nominee for National Security Advisor on November 18, 2016.  In December 2016, Flynn spoke on the phone to the Russian Ambassador.  Some or all of that conversation was recorded and transcribed by the National Security Agency (NSA).  According to published accounts, the Russian mentioned the sanctions just imposed by Obama, and Flynn made a non-committal response.  In yet another leak, on February 15, 2017, an unnamed current U.S. intelligence official told NPR that there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Flynn in the transcript.  Not to be outdone, the very next day, Chris Cuomo of CNN (or is it FNN?) reported that “we don’t know if Flynn’s call was wiretapped.”  Apparently Cuomo considers the February 9 New York Times report of the wiretap to be fake news.  And it looks like it was, because the Times, on March 8th, changed the headline from “wiretap” on Trump to “interception” on Russians.  How did these highly classified leaks happen.  Hold on to your hat!  Look no further than Il Duce Obama.  His eight years about to expire, Il Duce was determined to continue his community activism (a/k/a rabble rousing).  Armed with the 2012 election database he refused to give to Hillary for her campaign, and $40 million in contributions to his group Organizing for America (OFA), Obama has set up his shadow government headquarters in Washington, in the building of the World Wildlife Fund, not far from the White House.  OFA has joined a George Soros group dedicated to the disruption of the Trump Administration.  Obama sowed the seeds of disruption in his final days as President.  We are now learning that, on January 3, 2017, Obama issued an Executive Order to the NSA, which undid a Reagan era Order, and which required the NSA to release raw intelligence data it collected to 16 other government agencies.  Before Obama’s Order, the NSA controlled the flow of intelligence data.  By sending the raw data to 16 agencies, largely staffed by Obama’s appointees, Il Duce made the leaking of anti-Trump information a virtual certainty.  And so it came to pass, that a large number of disgruntled bureaucrats, just after hearing President Trump’s pledge to reduce the federal workforce by 20%, came into possession of classified wiretap information which could be used to damage Trump, and lo and behold, 9 days after the Obama NSA Order, the Washington Post published the leaked information.  The release of this information violated a number of laws.  Simply put, there is no scenario under which the release of the Flynn conversation could be legal, nor was the leak an unintended consequence of Obama’s Order; it was part of the plan.  The possibilities?     1) Obama was wiretapping Trump supporters, including Flynn, during the campaign and continued after the election.  That would be hard to explain, especially to Democrats who like to complain about threats to democracy.    2) If the wiretaps were ordered by the FISA court, or another court, the results could be released only by Court Order.  There is no such Court Order, so the release was a crime.  3) If the wiretaps were not court authorized, then the recording itself was illegal wiretapping.  That’s a crime.       4) If the target of the wiretap or NSA surveillance was the Russian Ambassador, and General Flynn simply got caught in that net, then somebody needs to explain why, and on what authority it was decided  that the chance to damage Trump justified disclosing to the Russians that their phones were being monitored, thereby putting them on the alert and compromising national security.  I’ve heard Democrats use the word “treason” regarding Flynn’s call.  Whoever sacrificed an important intelligence source for political purposes would seem to better fit the label of “traitor” than the good General.  That Obama’s fingerprints are on these leaks is plain, but the Republican establishment is not blameless.  Both sides are at war with Trump, and are trying to depose him.   The fact is that segments of both Parties are violating the law in an attempt to remove a duly elected President from office.  Watergate pales by comparison.  Coups d’etat are routine in banana republics.  No real American should countenance a coup attempt.  Putin is still laughing.